I’ve been working on a short biography of Max Mosley for the “Who’s Who” section on the website and while reading an old interview with him I came across a very good argument for why he should resign.

And he made the case himself. Here it is:

In 1997 champion-elect Jacques Villeneuve had given an interview in which he described Max Mosley’s planned rules changes for 1998 (grooved tyres and narrower cars) using a choice four-letter expletive.

Mosley and the World Motor Sports Council hauled Villeneuve over the coals for his ill-advised remark. Here’s his explanation why:

It is not that we have got self important at the FIA: what bothered me and the World Council, was that you get these major companies looking to come into Formula 1 and spend untold millions of pounds in sponsorships. And, inevitably, you will always have a few in the company who might be against the idea and the investment and are looking for the merest excuse to exercise a veto.

It’s clear to the dumbest person you do not want to allow any doubts to build up that could sabotage the level of investment some of these companies are prepared to go to, and careless talk from drivers of Villeneuve’s stature, or anybody else for that matter who is high profile and influential, is sending out the wrong messages and giving the sceptics ammunition. It is like sawing through the branch you are sitting on. You’d be crazy to do it.

If using a swear word risks bringing F1 into disrepuite, then surely the same applies if you get caught abusing people for fun? Especially when it’s you’re job to punish those who break F1’s rules, and only last year handed out what was the largest fine the sport has ever seen by a factor of 20.

(Besides which, Villeneuve was right. Next year, wider cars and slick tyres may well be back.)

13 comments on Why Mosley should quit – in his words

I’d imagine Mosley would counter by insisting what he did was nothing to do with F1 – Villeneuve was being interviewed about F1, so not only was his quote in the public domain it was actually about the sport.

What Max did (or was accused of at least) was away from, and nothing to do with, racing.

Not that I really want to stick up for him, but I can imagine that’s what he would say! Of course any negative story about a driver or high profile official is going to have an effect on F1 – especially when it’s the man at the top – so I still think he should go, but I won’t hold my breath!

I have no doubt there are a stack of quotes like this that could be used against Max as he seems unable to think of the consequences of what he says beyond the next ten minutes. His comments in the wake of the McLaren fine are almost exactly the opposite of his comments after the Renault case.

McLaren have several items they can’t touch this year because information was contained in the Ferrari dossier. At the same time Renault (and a number of other teams) are openly building J-dampers which are a straight rip off from the McLaren info on the Renault servers.

Last week a comment was circulated round a few websites which contained a quote from Max on the famous McLaren driver text messages. The gist of the quote was that it didn’t matter how the information became available to the FIA; legal or not. What mattered was the content of the information and that the information was genuine and not forged. Makes you wonder why the FIA is meeting on June 3rd to discuss the invasion of Max’s privacy rather than the content of the videos and newspaper stories since how it was obtained; legal or not is unimportant.

Come June 5, i expect TNOW to have headlines and vids depicting Mosley’s actions so those voting are reminded of the candidates for that position. In my opinion, the person showing his age here, is Bernie. If he can not advice Mosley to leave then I’m sure they both have a pact to ensure F1 is brought to ruins as they don not have very long to effectively run the circus.

This is a sad season for Formula 1 indeed – on one end, the sport is trying to come to grips with the ogre of racism for the first time while on the other, its top echelons are now associated with sexual perversity. I am disappointed with the pronouncements of the UAE association for basing their support on the non-illegality of Mosley’s perversions in the UK. Well, Mosley as citizen of the UK should rightly be legislated under the UK legal framework. However, Mosley as President of FIA is judged by the best practises of the countries over which he reigns. In most countries over which the FIA president executes command over motor sport matters, the kind of perversion that Max was involved in is illegal and morally distasteful. Since he is the president of the associations of those countries too, don’t the cultural, moral and legal inclinations of the people of those countries matter too to how he conducts himself? What would happen if for example he was from Zimbabwe where it is legal to grab property from one person just because you are in the ruling class and he is not, and say he grabbed some $300million from FIA un-procedurally on the understanding that back home he is in the ruling class and therefore legally entitled to do so? Would his many supporters still be arguing that such an act was right just because in his mother country it is so? Or that it was done in privacy and therefore he should not be exposed? By nature many wrong things are private and that does not shield the offenders from moral and legal penalties. Rape and paedophilia are the more obvious examples that come to mind. Indeed in some countries some of these activities are not illegal e.g. paedophilia is not illegal in many Asian and African countries – but that does not mean that the practitioners should be shielded from moral judgement when they are caught. After all, laws are often provoked by reactionary moral anger at vile activities that were outside the legal radar at the time of taking place. That of Mosley falls into this last category. We hope that in the future, many countries will illegalize these perversions.